Catalina Experience Staff Blog

Youth Camp’s Catalina Cooking Class

Who knew that I was such a good cook?!?! We made bread, sorbet, and lemonade; but all of our recipes used plants that we collected from the around the island. For our bread, we cut up pieces of black sage we picked. Then, Jason from the kitchen taught us how to make black sage bread. He even got to roll out the dough into baguettes.

Next, we used brown paper sandwich bags filled with sand to shake the spines off of the cactus fruits. We peeled the fruits and mashed them up. Next, we put them in a soccer-ball-like ice cream maker and played ‘hot potato,’ bowling, and soccer with it until it hardened into a delicious cactus fruit sorbet.

We also went and picked elderberries from a tree. We used the elderberries and some lemons to make ‘Freckle Lemonade.’ Our bread, sorbet, and lemonade tasted fantastic! It was like nothing else I have ever had before. Not only was it so special because of the native ingredients we used, but it was special because we all worked together to make it.